Fighting the armies of Satan
This week I came across a passage in Williston Walker’s A History of the Christian Church that has had me pondering about the early Christian martyrs. Walker writes,
In the face of persecution, imprisonment, and death, believers understood that they were being called, by unwavering confession of their Lord, to share the suffering by which Christ had overcome the forces of evil abroad in the world. The death of a martyr, a”witness”, was thus the glorious culmination of a struggle that led to eternal life……Their struggle, though, was not envisaged as a fight against Rome and its emperors. It was directed against Satan and his hosts, who held the world in thrall…..
I have never really thought about the struggle of the martyrs as being primarily a fight against Satan before. It always seemed like a fight between those who were confessing the faith and those who were against the faith. But as I look it more closely it makes perfect sense to see that the forces that led to the suffering and death of the martyrs were much more connected to Satan than to the Romans or any of the multitudes of people who have persecuted Christians throughout the centuries. We actually profess as Christians that we are to pray for those who persecute us, since they are God’s children in the same way that we are.
Jesus crucified is the model for the martyrs as he prays, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This pattern of those being persecuted and put to death as praying for those who are inflicting the violence upon them is a pattern we see in all the martyrs. These saints were inspired by Christ to love beyond measure.
Most of us are not likely to be called to a literal martyrdom, but all of us are called to the martyrdom of bearing the sins of our brothers and sisters. Each of us suffers from the sins of those around us every day. We can respond in turn, meeting evil with evil, or we can choose to meet evil with good. It’s when we choose the latter that we choose to fight Satan and his hosts, rather than our brothers and sisters who have fallen prey to him.
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